


so familiar a gleam

by 13warbob



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, F/M, I love these nerds, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 10:35:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20357050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13warbob/pseuds/13warbob
Summary: Audrey Larke may have actually had the worst soulmate mark ever.-or, the one in which everyone is a drama queen about soulmates





	so familiar a gleam

**Author's Note:**

> MORE HAUDREY CONTENT PLEASE
> 
> feel free to leave suggestions for fics in the comments, and please leave just any comments and kudos!
> 
> i love these fools.

Audrey Larke may have actually had the worst soulmate mark ever. And no, that wasn't a hyperbole. No matter how much her friends insisted that she was being a drama queen, she was almost certain that there are no worse first words for your soulmate to say to you than ‘Hi’.

‘You think that’s bad? Imagine walking around with ‘You just took the last pumpkin spice latte, you bitch’. Imagine having to tell that to Mrs Potts,’ her childhood best friend, Ben Prince, protested, sat in a chair next to where she had flopped despondently on the bed.

‘I said I was sorry!’ Chad Charming, Ben’s soulmate and possibly Audrey’s long lost twin, protested from where he was holding her head in his lap and tenderly stroking back her hair. Ben chuckled softly, and there was the unmistakeable sound of kissing happening above her head.

‘There better be no canoodling up there,’ she warned, although it most likely sounds a bit muffled due to her faceful of Chad’s khakis. Chad whined and Ben muttered a quiet, ‘sorry, Audrey,’ and she harrumphed to herself. ‘I mean, it’s bad enough that I’m probably never gonna find my soulmate,’ she said, tearing up slightly, ‘you don’t have to rub my face in it!’

And so the waterworks started.

Chad was immediately trying to hush her, pulling her further up his lap so he can rock her as if she was a little girl and not the just-turned seventeen that she was. Ben clambered onto the bed and wrapped his arms around his boyfriend, sandwiching Audrey in between them.

He started humming softly, and after a few seconds she recognises it as ‘Once Upon a Dream’. A rather unfortunate choice, really, considering that song was the first dance of her soulmate parents. Combine her fear of never finding her soulmate with the grief of her mother’s death when she was barely ten, and you understand why Ben was slipping away to fetch a towel rather than using the luxury tissues on her bedside table.

Chad sighs, and kissed her head. ‘I’m sorry Ben’s such an idiot,’ he said, and he sounded so genuine it startled a laugh out of her. He laughed above her, and gently began rocking her again, waiting for Ben to return and perform his own motherly duties.

She could feel her eyes drifting closed again when Chad shifted, greeting Ben as he entered. And then a quiet knock, and- ‘Princess?’ her father called softly.

Audrey moved, sitting up from Chad’s chest and wiping under her eyes, attempting to rearrange her hair into something resembling normal. ‘Hi, Daddy,’ she said, and he walked further into her room, dropping to his knees before her.

He raised her hands to his mouth and kissed the backs of them, and she smiled. It was a gesture he’d always done for her and for her mother - he claimed to have been raised with the right knowledge of how to treat a woman, and he wasn’t prepared to allow his girls anything but the best.

She was distantly aware of Ben all but forcing Chad from the room, and she made a mental note to thank him later. She loved Chad, she really did, but sometimes he could be a bit much - and that’s coming from her.

‘Not a good one, then,’ her father sighed, looking at her mark.

Audrey sniffed and shook her head.

If there was ever a story of a good soulmark, it would be the story of Aurora Thorne and Philip Larke. Both the only children of wealthy and influential families, there was a marriage contract placed between them before her mother was even a year old. However, being the headstrong characters they were, they decided they wanted to marry for love, not for duty - they wanted to find their soulmates. How strange, then, that after meeting in the woods and falling in love, they would learn they were each others’ betrothed!

They were married within the year, and Audrey was born within the next. It was true bliss, the epitome of a real life fairy tale - until her mother became sick.

Audrey shook her head, trying to force herself not to turn down that path. ‘Can I see it?’ she asked her father, fingers twitching towards his left wrist.

He smiled at her fondly and obligingly unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt, until Audrey could read her mother’s elegant cursive printed across his wrist. ‘Don’t I know you?’ it read, and Audrey knew that her father’s writing on her mother’s wrist used to read ‘Perhaps from a dream, for I know you from mine.’

It was true romance, really. Much better than a ‘Hi’.

‘Whatever your words say,’ her father told her, lifting her chin with one big hand to look into her eyes, ‘you’ll know.’

‘But what if-‘ Audrey started to protest, and her father put a single finger on her lips.

‘You’ll know.’

—

For a birthday treat, Chad insisted on paying for them to visit the Gardens. They were grown shortly after the death of her mother and were dedicated to her, and Audrey believed they were the most beautiful place in the world.

The sound of the water features and the sweet smell of the fresh blooms combined to create the definition of Audrey’s heaven, and she could feel tears welling in her eyes as she inhaled the strong, sweet scent of the Audrey Wilcox roses. They used to be her mother’s favourite - it was them she was named for.

Chad and Ben had left her alone with the blooms a minute before, promising they were only going to fetch Jane Goode, perhaps Audrey’s closest girl friend in the world, and Jane’s soulmate Doug Harlow, who,would perhaps be more interested in the garden than even she was. 

She exhaled sharply and tugged down the long sleeve of her floral peach tea dress. Now really wasn’t the occasion to dwell upon such matters as soulmates. She inhaled deeply and set her shoulders, steeling herself before she exhaled sharply and began to,walk up the cobbled path to meet her friends.

Naturally, of course, her life couldn’t be that easy, and her heel slipped in a gap and she fell. Or at least, she would have fallen - if someone hadn’t caught her.

She gasped and looked up, meeting bright, bright blue eyes. They were ringed in smudged kohl, and Audrey felt herself go even weaker at the knees. The boy - for it was a boy who had caught her - was perhaps the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, with a jaw so sharp she was afraid to cut herself and the highest cheekbones she’d ever seen on a boy.

‘Hi,’ she breathed, utterly transfixed.

He smiled at her, almost like he couldn’t help it. ‘Hi.’

She looked into his eyes and saw the stars, saw the waltz of her parents, saw the taste of sea salt and the tang of metal, wind swept hair and helpless laughter and a love so strong it made her chest ache.

‘Harry,’ a voice called from behind the boy - Harry, seemingly very frustrated but somehow also bored.

‘Audrey?’ Ben called behind her, and she could hear the tinge of protectiveness in his voice and knew instinctually Chad was most likely holding him back.

‘I’m fine,’ she almost giggled, and she likely would have blushed were it possible. ‘I just - fell. Harry- Harry caught me.’

‘That I did, love,’ he almost purred, and that accent, good god. He raised her back up again, so she wasn’t laying in his arms anymore, but she was very aware of the arm he kept wrapped around her waist. He turned to her friends and smiled winningly at them. ‘I suppose you could say that she fell for me.’

Groans echoed from behind them, and Audrey turned to see two beautiful blue-haired girls, hand in hand, with two boys with biceps bigger than her head, the dark haired boy with his arm around the blond’s waist and the blond’s around his shoulders. She glanced at Harry’s face and saw he was grinning, barely able to control his excitement.

‘So,’ the darker girl asked, tossing a handful of teal braids over her shoulder, ‘is she yours?’

Harry turned to face her, raising a hand and cupping her cheek. Audrey couldn’t fight the urge to lean into his palm. ‘You saw it too, right?’ he murmured, like it was a secret between them. ‘The stars, and the dance, and the smell of roses?’

‘Sea salt,’ she murmurs back, and something in his eyes softens beyond all possibility.

He exhaled a shaky laugh, and Audrey thought she might cry. He pressed their foreheads together, fingers wound in her hair, grin stretching his face beyond belief.

‘Told you there was a good reason to come,’ the blond boy told Harry, but it seems less of a rib and more of a statement of fact.

‘Let go of her, Harry,’ the girl with the darker blue hair complained, ‘let us meet her!’

Harry reluctantly separated from her, but kept a tight grip of her hand.

‘Hi,’ the girl with the deep blue hair said, smiling at her so lovingly Audrey thought perhaps she was a long lost godmother. ‘I’m Evie. It’s so so lovely to meet our final fated member.’ Her smile became even brighter, somehow, and she hugged Audrey so gently Audrey felt she might cry again.

‘Now who’s hogging her?’ Harry snarked, and a cough echoed behind them pointedly.

She turned to see Chad impatiently tapping his foot, arms folded across his chest. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Is no one going to introduce us?’

‘Um,’ Audrey said, and decided against letting him know that she had slightly forgotten about him. ‘This is Chad, the annoying one, Ben, the brunette in blue, Doug, the long-haired one, and Jane, the only one who hasn’t done anything wrong.’

‘Hey!’ her boys chorused in protest, and she, Jane, and Evie shared a giggle.

‘Very good,’ the teal girl said, and somehow Audrey could tell it was a genuine compliment rather than patronising. ‘I’m Uma. You’ve been introduced to my soulmate, Evie, my right hand, Harry, and these two dunderheads,’ she says, waving next to her, ‘are the muscle. Gil,’ the blond waved at her, a genuine smile on his face, ‘and Jay,‘ and the dark haired boy, before he winked at her. At her side, Harry growled quietly, as well as Ben behind her.

‘Well,’ Audrey said, and she laced her fingers through Harry’s hand where he’d released her waist. ‘It’s very nice to meet you all.’

‘I think we’ll be seeing a fair bit of you,’ Uma said, eyes pointedly focused on their linked fingers.

But, instead of becoming embarrassed and letting go, Harry tugged her closer. ‘Yes we will,’ he said, staring straight into her eyes, and something in Audrey’s heart thrilled at the promise.


End file.
